Educating Risa

This morning the boys and I headed to Calgary’s Firefighter Museum, for their grand-re-opening. Despite the pouring rain and gloomy skies, we had a wonderful time. We listened to speeches, heard some live music, learned local history, talked one-on-one with a friendly “old timer” fire fighter, checked out displays, and so on. The boys got the chance to put out a virtual fire with a virtual fire extinguisher (using SMART technology)—and Daegan might even end up on TV!

We arrived right at the 10:30 kick-off time, and went into a large outdoor tent that had been set up for the speeches. We joined a group of about 70 schoolkids from Cappy Smart school. Cappy Smart served as Calgary’s Fire Chief from 1898-1933 (Calgary was founded only in 1885), and was quite a colourful character. You can read more about him here. I have to say whoever organized things did very well, providing kids with crayons and paper-covered tables to draw on while waiting and during the speeches:

There were some displays set up at “stations” for the school kids, to learn about fire safety:

Various dignitaries gave brief speeches, and then we were treated to the leader of the Cappy Smart band playing his flugelhorn:

We then headed over into the museum itself. There was a display just inside the door that took us a minute to figure out how to work:

The display showed three triangles around the outside, ‘fuel’ (with pictures of wood, gasoline, etc.), ‘heat’ (candle, matches) and oxygen (‘wind’). When you cozied them up against the ‘Fire’ triangle in the middle, it lit up—you’ve got fire!

The main attraction of the museum is a fully restored old-time aerial firetruck,  nicknamed “Maggie”. We spent quite a bit of time considering how Maggie different from today’s fire trucks, such as having a wooden extension ladder:

We also noticed how different the wheels were, with see-thru spokes and thinner rubber tire. At this point an oldtimer overheard us talking and told us that the tires were solid rubber, and the springs / suspension tight too. As he put it, “The only padding you had was on your seat, and you felt EVERY rock en route to the fire.” Gareth asked him a few more questions about the truck and firefighting; it added a wonderful bit of colour to our visit.

The other truck inside the museum is an old Ronald Steamer, a horse-drawn wagon with a big cauldron of water that, using steam, was able to apply 120 pounds per square inch of pressure, quite a reasonable amount for the era. The museum is taking donations, and proceeds from the gift shop will go towards the estimated $180,000 it will cost to have the Steamer fully restored.

There were lots of artefacts to look at, many of which gave a good sense of the era. I was surprised by how engaging the boys found this part of the museum, which was not hands-on, and more adult-oriented (lots of writing).

A leather bucket used in a ‘bucket brigade’, an electric lantern (flashlight / torch), and a public fire alarm, like the ones you see in buildings today. It wasn’t until the late 1970s that the 911 system was in place, and before then, there were public pull-in-case-of-fire alarms around the city. Who knew?

One of the boys favourite parts was at the end, where they got to put out a virtual fire. Daegan first had to learn how to use the fire extinguisher:

And then aimed it (it shone a green light at the screen) to put out the fire. It was very hard to get the fire under control before your fire extinguisher ran out of ‘juice’, just like real life!

There was a cameraman there from Shaw TV (our local Cable TV / Community TV), who asked if Daegan could do it again so he could get shots—that is, if it was ok to put Daegs on TV. Daegan was happy to oblige:

And Gareth, the social charmer, got a turn too. They have fire hats and kid-sized fire suits for the kids to put on first for this activity, but given the 70 school kids and 8 suits, they didn’t put them out today. Good decision, even if Gareth was disappointed.

Unfortunately with the pouring rain we didn’t get to check out the half-dozen or so other trucks outside. But we’ll go back again sometime. The museum is still quite small and young—compare Winnipeg’s Fire Fighter Museum—but we had a great time, and enjoyed getting to talk with folks one-on-one. Gareth’s favourite part was putting out the fire, but Daegan quite surprised me by saying his favourite part was seeing the old trucks and old objects and seeing how things were different a long time ago. Many thanks to Tracy, a local HS Mom, for telling us about this grand re-opening.